The first thing he realises when he wakes, is that he's lying in what looked to be Zonko's joke shop, and Sirius Black's barking laughter was echoing all around it.
"Moony!"
What? What on earth – a bloody Joke Shop – is this Hogsmeade!?
"Moony!"
Suddenly strong hands grip under his arms and he's dragged rather forcefully to his feet, twirling around with a sort of dumb-eloquence that left him stumbling over his own feet and into the seventeen year old face of Sirius Black.
"B-Buh?" he says. He instantly berates himself. Buh!? Wait, Hogsmeade? What!?
He's wrapped in a hug. It's not warm. That doesn't seem to register for a moment as he stares beyond Sirius' shoulder where James Potter and Lily Evans were smiling in the corner, propped comfortably on top of boxes of Zonko's merchandise. They were also young, but James has a strange look of maturity about him that's almost foreign to Remus' eyes. Lily waves, James grins and rests his head back against the wall, he's tossing a snitch in his hand.
"I'm dead." Remus says. Sirius sighs and shrugs.
"Yep."
"…T-To-?"
"Sorry mate."
He falls down again, onto his knees, staring numbly at the wall.
"But Teddy…"
"He's going to be fine," Lily assures him suddenly, and a feeling rushes through him that he's almost guilty about. A feeling of elation, of sudden and disgusting happiness and he stumbles to his feet and engulfs her in a hug. James is next, and he pointedly ignores the other boy's amused whine of 'steady on mate!'.
He realises now that he should be crying, but he can't.
"Harry?"
Lily almost swells, her face lighting up with a grin and her body puffing up proudly. James' grin looks like it's about to fall of his face, the way he was stretching it to the extreme. The perfect picture of proud parents.
"Oh please," Sirius laughs, he's young and handsome and carefree again, and Remus wonders if he should be thinking that Sirius seemed happier in death. "As if you had to ask!"
"T-Then he did it!" Remus feels himself grinning. Don't think about them, he tells himself, Teddy'll be fine; it'll only hurt more if you think about them-
"Tonks isn't here," James says, his voice mellow and familiar and it makes Remus want to cry. "Sorry mate, I think she's gone to her own place now."
Remus nods, numbly.
"But why are we here? I mean… seriously…Zonko's?"
Sirius shrugs, eyebrows raised.
"Don't ask us, we only felt you coming here. Why you chose Zonko's I'll never know mister Prefect."
"We could go someplace else if you like?" Lily asks kindly, and suddenly they're in the Great Hall, and there's a crowd of people around them, apparently oblivious to the newcomers as they go about their way.
"Are they…?"
"Dead too? Yeah." Sirius smile is gone as a small Gryffindor boy runs past, camera flashing wildly. He's joined by – oh god, was that – with red hair and freckles and face alight with a Cheshire grin as he follows the boy along, also completely oblivious to the others presence. It seemed everyone here was in a state of their own minds.
For a split second Remus finds himself looking for Dumbledore. It was the Great Hall, wasn't it? Hogwarts was Dumbledore's proudest achievement, wouldn't he be here?
"Don't bother," Sirius leans against the table beside him, head tilting to one side. "He's not here."
"Where is he?"
"He's somewhere else," it was Lily now, sitting on the Gryffindor table beside his shoulder, curtain of red falling down beside her face. Remus could still catch the look in her eyes. "He's talking to someone else."
After a few minutes of recognising faces he rather wouldn't, Remus couldn't handle it.
"Not here," he pleaded them. "Not here, please."
"Then where?" Lily asks kindly.
Then they are gone again, and the three marauders are sitting at the foot of a beech tree, Lily a while off dangling her legs in the lake. She stands and wanders over to them, but her legs are dry as a bone as she sits cross-legged before them.
"Nice choice, Moony." She says, smiling and patting his shoulder.
"Excellent choice," Sirius agrees. He glances up, and jerks his head to someone over Remus' shoulder. Snapping around, he's horrified and amazed to see Severus wandering across the grass towards them. Amazingly he's less pale than he was when he was alive, and sits cross-legged between Lily and Remus.
"You're-" Remus stops, hanging his head, then glances up to see Lily pat Severus' leg comfortingly. Surprisingly James showed no emotion. They all made a circle now, except for one space that seemed to be left deliberately for someone.
That someone appears now, as if fading into a picture, and Remus can't do anything but sit and stare in cold shock as Peter Pettigrew sat between Severus and Sirius.
"Hello Peter," James says softly. "Is he coming?"
Peter looks about as awkward as Remus feels. But when he speaks, in that stuttering squeaky voice he used to always speak in, there was a smile on his face and his eyes were red.
"No," he says, weakly, grinning. "No, he's not coming."
Lily's and James' hands are suddenly clasped in a firm, strong, grip, and she drops her head in her hands, shoulders shaking with relieved but broken laughter.
"Thank god," James says quietly. "Thank god."
Remus thinks he can see it in the way the rest of the group exchanged relieved smiles – even, god forbid, Severus, if not a forced one – what they mean. Who they were talking about. Who Dumbledore was seeing, and why that person would not be coming to join the group.
"Yes," he whispers, and can't help but smile at the group of friends he grew up with. "Yes, thank god."
He wasn't sure if it was heaven. But the sun is spreading over the lake of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and its lighting up the many faces of the dead.